


the cure to growing older

by rhymae



Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, Daddy Issues, Friends to Lovers, Gunshot Wounds, Injury Recovery, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person, Queer Themes, not what you're thinking. but still very shawn spencer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23999119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhymae/pseuds/rhymae
Summary: Because the trick goes like this: you play the game, and you pick the clues, and you solve the puzzle.You’re a psychic, but you’re not. You’re a detective, but you’re not really.There are rules, but they’re your rules: coded violations penned by your name and Gus’s.Gus who knows you like the back of his hand, who has always been the one to pull you out of your own floods.Or, Shawn is 29 when his lies finally match the number of his truths. He’s thirty when it catches up to him. The world still turns, albeit with a few alterations.
Relationships: Burton "Gus" Guster/Shawn Spencer
Comments: 19
Kudos: 129





	the cure to growing older

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing. Title is from Fall Out Boy & the entirety of the FUTCT album was the playlist to this fic.
> 
> This is set early S4.
> 
> I hope you enjoy <3
> 
> “Now I see that the first boy I loved  
> loved speed for its own sake the way  
> we all loved our bodies before learning  
> to feel ashamed…
> 
>   
> That whole brutal summer  
> I pulled weeds in my father’s garden,  
> my body stunned by its great momentum”
> 
> \- Julia Kasdorf, “Freight”

Here is a list of things you know:

Once, in high school, you made a bet with Gus that you could kiss Cindy Lewis on the lips before the clock struck 6:14pm on that same Tuesday. 

It was nothing special, another misplaced wager, another item to get Gus to roll his eyes.

“Sure, Shawn,” Gus had told you, and he didn’t look like he believed you, but you always knew that was the first step of trust— by him telling you that he didn’t have to voice it. 

Gus said, “Loser buys take out for the Molly Ringwald marathon.”

And you’d laughed, said, _oh Gus, you make this too easy! Really!_

He did, looking back. Because you did it, of course. 

Right on the dot at 6:13, you had Cindy’s lips against yours. 

And at 6:30, you were sitting in your dad’s living room with a red cheek on the left side of your face, and Gus to your right. A mix of Chinese and Cajun take-out filled the entire front table.

Gus shook his head, laughing, when you’d shown up red on one side of your face and still grinning because _look you promised me a marathon and she couldn't get behind it and I know how cross you can get when you miss your program and don’t look at me like that, your mom says so too—_

It was more than half the truth, for once, so you didn’t add in the part you still weren’t sure about. How even with Cindy’s cotton candy breath on your lips, you wanted nothing more than to make it on time to movie night with your best friend.

Instead, you stole an extra serving of jerk chicken and let Gus have the gummy bears you snagged on the trip back home.

It was imperfectly perfect. Then and now, the past’s shape you used to carve out your present. It’s like a suspension of limbo, like you never left the moment and chose to frame every other event with it in reference.

It goes back further, of course. But that’s another thing you know. 

Back to when you were seven and your dad stuck the fishing rod in your hands and said that _if you were old enough to not clean your room, you were old enough to earn dinner._

You’d sat by the lake all day talking to yourself and anything else around to listen, until your mom found you and carried you in, wrapping you up in your favorite blanket inside.

She didn’t talk to your dad for a week. So you filled the silence for both of them. 

The empty cracks in the house took turns being covered by your voice, by Gus’s when his parents let him come over, even if they still weren’t very fond of you.

So, you’re good at perfectly imperfect. It’s the one thing you know you have just yourself to thank for.

Because, now, suddenly you are twenty nine and life comes at you in flashes. 

Or, really, you remember it in flashes. In fragments. In little puzzle pieces you’ve spent your life trying to put together correctly. 

You’re a psychic, but you’re not. You’re a detective, but you’re not really. 

You’re here in the moment, but you’re also wherever the clues need you to be at that same second.

There are rules, but they’re your rules. Your own coded violations penned by your hands and Gus’s. 

It’s always worked. You don’t question it, Gus does occasionally, and your dad never does anything but.

It still works.

You don’t have to worry about counting on something if you already know it works.

.

  
  


There is something about you that doesn’t let things go. 

It comes up in cases, in teasing Lassie and Jules, in remembering the exact details of Gus’s orders at every restaurant you’ve ever been to.

Your dad told you it was something about a narcissists disorder, and you bit your tongue for once and made another Judd Nelson joke instead of saying what you’d _really_ thought, nearly drawing the ugly sour thing inside of you out.

You didn’t tell him that maybe if you’d spent less time being coached to count hats, then maybe you’d be a bit more mainstream functional. Or that maybe mom wouldn’t have spent so many nights crying when she thought you couldn’t hear her. 

You didn’t say it because you didn’t think the argument would have been as fun as you would have liked it to be. 

So your dad and Lassie were wrong, again, because that proves you are grown up. 

You are mature. You’re smart enough to know which fights to avoid, but bored enough to know which ones promise the brightest explosions.

But like you said, you can’t let things go.

And maybe that’s why, when you’re facing down Bad Guy of Week Number Three, you can’t shake the feeling that something’s off.

The thing is, it’s a basic case. 

The Chief called you in this time, hired you like a proper consultant and you rubbed it in Gus’s face the moment the meeting let out and you picked him up from work. 

Some local jewelry store robbery that got messy too fast but nothing outrageous. You’d inserted yourself into the intervention and everything had fallen right into place just the way you liked it.

Now, Gus is still in the corner of the room cowering behind Lassie. Safe. Juliet has her gun out and aimed at the subject of your big reveal. Focused.

Everyone’s in position, everyone’s playing the part, but something’s _off_. Something’s wrong, and you can’t _see_ it. 

You can’t divine it and you can’t place it, can’t shape the crime scene into your own personal playpen just yet.

And then Bad Guy of the Week Number Three breaks the script. 

He moves too quick, flunks the position so badly that you’re moving yourself into the direct line of sight before he does anything more than blur his hands, shifting away from Gus and Jules.

There are red lights flashing back and forth inside your head like a laser show, like the sirens of your dad’s old cop car. 

And then you’re meeting eyes with Bad Guy Number Three. 

Everything’s frozen. Still in the eye of the storm, in the way you know that you're directly in the middle of tornado alley.

The focus is on you, is still _always_ on you, and you’re running down the rehearsal like a script, before anyone can move, saying: “Woah woah, wait, this isn’t how this works. See, this is the reveal. The part where I get to gloat. All the glory’s gotta go somewhere, you know? So if you could _just—”_

Two seconds. 

Two seconds, the clock running in the back of your head tells you, is all the time you have to think, _oh, there it is_ , before a sharp crack breaks the air and fragments the illusion, shattering your makeshift stage.

At first, you think it was Lassie’s trigger finger. You are more than happy to keep believing that.

You even think, _well that was easy_ , before there’s a white hot pain radiating through your chest and you open your eyes to the ceiling.

You hear a mix of things in the aftermath. 

It’s an uneven mixture of _Shawn!_ and _Spencer!_ and _Put the gun down or I’ll shoot you right now I swear to God_ . And, _how many hats are there, Shawn? Get it right and maybe you’ll get the cake—_

But, you want to tell your dad, you can’t see the hats with the way your head’s swimming. 

There’s something warm around your back, instead, before suddenly everything gets too cold.

There’s Gus’s voice, somewhere, saying, _Shawn! - I told you Melody was pulling your leg - Shawn! - you’re gonna get found out you know? Not if they can’t catch us! - Shawn!_ \- _you don’t make this easy, you know? Yes, but whoever said easy was fun! — Sha—_

Your name, repeated over and over like a mantra for something you can’t keep track of because everything’s too much and too little at the same time.

It feels like a submergence when it comes to you, finally. The late realization of the missing puzzle piece as a second gun. 

It’s stupid. It’s misplaced and so obvious it’s _cliche_. 

You were shot by a cliche, your mind finally registers, and it feels like a joke. Like your dad’s going to pop out from behind the ugly lime green curtains and say _Surprise, Shawn! This is what happens when you get cocky. Don’t let yourself slip up, or I wasted all those years for nothing. You know your mother and I_ \- 

It makes you want to laugh. For all the times you’d played the part of psychic, it’s the first time you rely solely on the skill that you get knocked down.

It does put a damper on your winning streak. 

Five you and Gus; two for Jules and Lassie. Three, for your dad, you remember belatedly, and you think you must make some kind of noise because suddenly there are more hands pressing against your chest.

Everything seems to glow white.

You aren’t in the position to laugh, even if the moment had been funny, because when you try to move, you think you scream. 

Your body lights up like the _Operation_ game Gus made you play in second grade, and everything in the room comes into focus at the wrong times— details you don’t need, voices you don’t care about, smothering out the ones that you do.

You want to close your eyes and rewind thirty minutes ago. Preferably with a gun of your own and to say, smooth, _“Don’t be a rabid bear, Gus.”_

To watch Gus roll his eyes, Juliet looking playfully indulgent.

You’d say, _We’ve solved the case! One more murderer behind bars. It does my heart good_.

Half the reward would be watching Lassie make a noise you chose to decipher as fond and then risking a wink.

Instead, reality is much more smudged around the edges. 

It’s fuzzy, but there’s something pressing against your chest that makes the world go from red to white. 

You think maybe it’s Lassie’s voice above you, but it sounds wrong, _nervous_ nearly, when it says _Damn it, Spencer, hold on. Help is coming—_

Your hand comes away from where you must have been holding your stomach. 

You stare at it for too long. 

Because it doesn’t look like your hand at all. It looks like a pint of finger paint. The kind you used to use to paint a smile across Gus’s face where he’d pretend to be upset until you caught him laughing in the mirror. 

You think, _that’s a lot of blood._ And then you stop. 

Because the trick goes like this: you play the game, and you pick the clues, and you solve the puzzle.

You just didn’t think you’d get sloppy enough to be caught in the edges.

It’s all very fun, very lively and bright, and if you’re careful, you almost can’t hear the sounds of your internal clock ticking down when you play the game. 

Which is why this is all so wrong. 

The details, the tremors in Lassie’s voice. The way you can’t see Gus or your dad anywhere even though you can hear their voices echoing. 

Because Lassie never sounds worried the same way Jules never falters. And then, maybe it’s instinct or maybe someone says your name, your eyes are focusing away from the fuzzing out long enough for you to see Juliet, stumbling in something red, something like blood. 

Gus’s hands are on top of hers, pushing on something and yelling when he sees your eyes are open again. 

You don’t remember closing them. That’s probably bad.

Gus always looks some level of nervous, but that isn’t what makes your heart drop.

It’s the way he’s looking at you like he’s forgotten it’s not just the two of you in the room.

It’s a different variation of the look he gave you when your mom really didn’t come back and your dad still made you go to school, tear tracks and all.

Now, it’s just Gus crying. There are no missing parents to blame or after school specials to get weepy over. It’s fear shaking his hands, but it’s also anger. It’s sheer and complete terror.

You have a million words and no way to get them out right.

You can already see Gus's face shifting into his denial smile and a _don’t play, Shawn._ You don’t like the vision.

No one has to tell you you’re dying for you to get the picture.

There’s a split second where you think you move, before everything seems to glow so white it stops shining altogether.

The moment before you fall into it, you think this is the closest to regret that you’ve ever gotten.

  
  


.

  
  
  


Here’s another thing that you know, even if you act like you don’t:

When you were seventeen, you got drunk at Sandy McAlister's graduation party, and Gus was the one to find you swaying against a wall. 

Of course it was Gus, obviously. It was always Gus, _is_ always Gus, pulling you out of your own floods.

Gus had stared and shook his head, said, “You're certifiable, you know.”

But he’d said it in his _Fond-Gus_ voice, the one that never failed to warm you to your toes, even if you never told him that it did.

And this is what it came down to, when you let yourself remember: Gus was leaving in a week for college and your mom had been gone for a while longer. 

You hadn’t sent in applications for anywhere and had a new, shiny criminal record thanks to your father.

Gus had a future, and you were on-track to fall into the past.

So when you placed your hands on Gus’s face and pulled him in, to the beat of Pat Benatar on the stereo and surrounded by half-a-dozen faces you’d still remember even after you yourself became a faded memory, it felt like magic. 

It felt like coming home. Not to your stuffy childhood bedroom, but to all the adventures outside of it. To all the places you’d ended up together over the years. The places Gus was moving on towards, without you.

You broke away slowly, with a smile and a light, “So I’ve been told.” 

You didn’t open your eyes. You didn’t want to, didn’t have to because you already knew the pity stamped across your best friend’s face like a burnt memory you didn’t want to be stuck with.

Instead, you let the line lead into a laugh long enough to let you fall against Gus’s shoulder. Casual and just on the wrong side of loss.

Gus didn’t push you off, even though you could feel how tense he’d gotten. 

You don’t remember the rest of the night, aside from puking on someone’s shoes and Gus stuffing you through your bedroom window when it was all over. But you remember everything else. 

You remember that the next morning Gus didn’t say a thing about what happened at the party, so you sucked it up and followed suit. 

The next weekend, Gus was with his family for his own party, and you showed up at the tail end of it with a bottle of liquor you’d stolen from your father’s cabinet and rocks to throw against Gus’s window.

Your dad hadn’t bothered to give you anything for graduation, but you didn’t need anything anyway. 

When you slipped through the window and gave Gus that limited edition spider-man comic he’d been raving about since you were twelve, nothing else mattered once his eyes lit up and he pulled you in for a hug like you were both still just kids again.

And if you held on a little tighter than normal, neither of you said anything about it.

The next morning, by the time your dad first tried to call, you were four towns over, a backpack slung across your chest and your motorcycle a staple beneath you.

  
  
  


. 

  
  


In all the movies you and Gus have spent your lives watching, you’ve seen people get shot. 

More than once you’ve spent the time laughing at Gus’s critiques of the blood splatter before he goes green from it. 

Hell, you’ve watched people get shot in front of you— first on an emergency call with your dad (who didn’t know you’d snuck into the truck bed, not until you screamed at the sight of blood on the pavement when peeking out the plastic cover shading you). 

You’ve seen it on your day job for the past three years, repeatedly and messy. 

You’ve seen people get shot— you’ve seen people who recover and some who don’t. 

For someone with your memory, it’s near impossible to forget anything between the existence of gunfire to its stopping point.

And add that to the enforced hyper vigilance built up through your childhood— well, you thought you’d had a pretty clear picture of what you were getting yourself into. Give or take a few stitches. 

Turns out though, that getting shot is not all it’s painted out to be.

The movies lied. 

There’s no great flood of direction that comes to you through the pain, no angel appears bathed in holy light to tell you to get your shit back together because there are people that love you.

At least there’s no montage of your life flashing before your eyes. If you had to relive your childhood over again, you definitely wouldn’t wake up sane. Your current condition is questionable enough.

But, somehow, and in a way that makes you think you owe a lot of people some court (Gus) ordered apologies, you do wake up.

You wake up and, with the way your body aches worse than that time you’d been run off your motorcycle combined with being hit in the back of the head by Drimmer’s gun, you almost wish you hadn’t.

You say as much, you think, and the shuffling next to you alerts you that 1.) you did in fact say something, at least a noise 2.) it definitely wasn’t coherent 3.) you are not alone.

When you tilt your head slowly, you find a passed-out Gus cramped in a plastic chair by your bedside. His face twitches when you hum.

“Well,” you say, and it comes out clearer this time, albeit rough in a way that makes you wonder how long you’ve been out. Gus stirs. 

“I know I said I always wanted my _The Choice_ moment, but this seems a little much.”

Gus’s eyes open, and he blinks. Blinks again. 

And then the chair is screeching across the floor from the way he throws himself on the edge of your bed. 

You say, “I guess I can’t really say I was comatose for sure, but I always pictured myself as more of a Travis Shaw, you know? Gabby Holly isn’t a bad second.”

“Holland,” Gus corrects, and then it’s your turn to blink.

“I’ve heard it both ways,” you say. “But was I at least right about missing the coma part?”

Gus looks at you, a little more focused this time, a little more scared, and the joking tone drops into something heavy and cold. 

Okay, so you were either wrong about the coma, or this is more of a _If Only_ situation than you thought. 

Either of those options are not exactly ideal.

Something feels different, too. More loaded, more angry under the surfaces. It’s different this time, you know, because you almost died.

You almost lost because one of your pieces moved when you weren’t expecting it, and everyone saw the bright lit backfire. 

Gus who gets nauseous at even the idea of blood was slipping in yours. You can remember the phantom of hands on your stomach, your chest, someone crying.

Gus snaps you back into the present, “Shawn.”

You close your eyes for a second.

Because you know it’s serious, you do. Because the anger in the room is palpable, yes, but there’s also so much _fear_ you feel like you’re drowning in it.

It’s never felt like this before. Usually there’s a little room, a few jokes, maybe a call to your dad, and a white lie promise in the form of soft serve. 

This time is different because one piece broke the script and you would have rather had eight more bullets shoot through your chest than for the gunman’s eyes to stray anywhere else. But no one else knows that.

You open your eyes and meet Gus’s head on. 

He’s still just as careful as he was at eight, at ten, at twenty eight when you’d waltzed right back into Santa Barbra like the last decade was nothing but lint on the bottom of your shoe. 

The good kind of careful, the kind that makes movie marathons and solving crime over smoothies with your best friend somewhat worth the years you lost learning how to do it.

You find that, for once, you don’t have a monologue. You don’t have a speech or a diluted explanation to make you both laugh and to set things right.

Gus says, carefully, “I think we need to reevaluate some things.”

There have been sirens playing through your mind on loop since you woke up, but the careful tone is what makes your skin crawl the most. 

That and the way Gus is subtly trying to angle himself between you and the door, as if you’d march out of the hospital bed at the mere announcement of potential rules.

Which, okay, it is something you _would_ do, yes, but he’s still too serious about it. The atmosphere still feels too heavy with something you haven’t placed yet.

When you realize what it is, you’re too slow again. 

Because, well, you hadn’t thought that after being shot, Gus would think your first instinct would be to run away. Or that the tension is him trying to tow the line between getting you into gear and making sure you _stay_. 

It’d be a fair leap, maybe, if it was something else, _someone_ else in the hospital bed or worse, but not now.

You were always the first to leave, you know, so you don’t get to complain.

You don’t get to fault the lack of trust buried under the grown shadow of your best friend.

You don’t, but it still hurts to see the after effects. The cracks in your best friend that you left, slapped glitter glue on, and kept patching up the chipping with stickers.

So you say, lightly teasing, testing, “You know how I feel about rules, Gus. I was always more of the rebel type. Someone has to be Han, you know?”

Gus still looks nervous but also unimpressed. It’s a start.

“You were never Han, Shawn. At best maybe Chewy. R2, even.”

“Okay, now you’re just being mean. I even have the cool hair, the bad boy persona! Look, I’ll even let you be Luke. Star of the galaxy, huh?”

“Please, I’m not dumb enough to make that deal. And if that was a rip on the title, you can do better.”

Your pout is too much of a smile to be considered successful, but you’re leaning towards the latter at the way Gus’s face seems to soften. 

It’s not over, you know. But it’s a start, an avoidance, because you can feel the morphine drowning out the careful filter you keep in place.

Gus shakes his head, “You’re a handful, you know that? I don’t get paid enough for this.”

“Well buddy, most times we don’t get paid at all.”

You try to say it quickly, but you can hear the morphing slurring your words. Your eyes are getting heavier, but you still blink at Gus’s exasperated noise. 

Gus says, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you.” 

And then, quieter: “Something’s gotta change, Shawn. I want to stick with this, but you have to meet me halfway here.”

You’re way too high for this conversation right now, which makes Gus a genius because he knows he’d never get to have it any other way. Cruel but fair. You both know how to play the gamer, after all. You both set the rules at eleven.

“Okay,” you slur out. “Okay, okay, fine— you can be Han. And I’ll try to stop getting shot at my big reveals. There’s something in it for everybody.”

The quiet lasts anywhere from three seconds to two years. You really can’t tell. You don’t even know what color the ceiling tile is right now. God, you’re off your game. It would be embarrassing if Jules or Lassie were here. Sometimes it’s the little things.

So you can’t be penalized, technically, when you add, eyes getting heavier, even when you can feel Gus’s resting on you: “But you can’t get shot either. Or the deal’s off. I’ll even buy one of those awful Han costumes that cost like, three hundred dollars.”

“It’s called cosplay, Shawn.”

“I’ve heard it both ways.”

You can hear Gus snort, but you can’t bring yourself to open your eyes to see it. Hearing it is and isn’t enough all at once. 

Gus says, “Fine. But I’m drafting up a contract later. Right now, I’ve gotta get the rest of your paperwork.” 

You blink your eyes open when the chair squeals. 

Gus walks out the doorway, and he looks older than thirty— tired but also relieved. Patient in a way you don’t think you’ve truly earned.

Because here is another thing about the trade relationship between the two of you:

On your path of teaching Gus how to live, neither of you accounted for the possible dying.

Not seriously, not in the way Lassiter and your dad have been trying to hammer into you for years.

You get it, now.

You’d still take the bullet, again though, as many times as it takes to keep eyes away from Gus and on you. Two, four, six, all the way up to thirty if you have to and then some.

You never figured you’d have a dependency streak, but it’s nice to know there are still some interesting surprises in the world.

You could totally get a movie deal out of this too.

When Gus comes back in, his eyes catch yours before they narrow. 

“Do I want to know why you’ve got your creepy ‘I just solved it’ smile on?”

You hum, sinking down into the bed. “No, probably not. Also, I’m going to pass out for a few hours now. _Smoothie King_ on the way to the office tomorrow?”

“You know that’s right.”

You think you laugh before you pass out. 

.

  
  


When you were twelve, your dad took you and Gus down to the heart of the city. 

You don’t remember what it was for, but you remember the way the streets lit up— Santa Barbra on display and bathed in firelight. Gus’s hand brushing yours while you walked because the streets were filled. 

Your dad said, “Watch your pockets, boys. I don’t have time to deal with thieves tonight.”

And you looked at Gus and whispered, false conspiratory and far too slow to be genuine, eyebrows raised: “If I’d known he’d ever had the time, we’d be _at least_ six Porsches richer right now.”

Here’s what you remember about what happened afterwards, how you recall the night whenever you think about it:

Gus laughed so hard he had to raise his hand quick to cover the snorting, and you couldn’t help the smile that split across your face. 

The joke wasn’t funny enough to warrant it, but there was something contagious about the atmosphere that made it feel right. You felt proud. You felt empowered, understood.

You were on the brink of high school, the early onset of adolescence you’d been craving and fearing at the same time.

The night was electric, and you felt the reality of it settle and solidify across your skin when you made the mistake of focusing on the details of Gus’s face, the way you felt his smile mirrored on your own skin— just one moment of frozen clarity. 

It was beautiful and it was awful because it was the first time that, when Gus laughed too loud at something you’d said, your face got too hot before your stomach iced over. 

You didn’t exactly need your observation skills to know why.

Your dad’s conference came at the price of constant guest lectures, but for once you didn’t mind. 

You sat there, hands folded still in your lap and heart in your throat as every cop you met tried to tell you things you already knew. 

Gus managed to catch your eye throughout with a new expression every time, and you had laughed and wondered, for the first time, how you were going to live with the guilt of loving your best friend more than you should. 

  
  


.

  
  
  


The hospital stay lasts four days. 

You’re told you are considered lucky, something about a bullet graze and artery avoidance that you tuned out of once your dad started asking questions. 

Gus called him, you joked, and your dad looked annoyed but slightly indulgent after he learned you weren’t in immediate danger of dying.

You’re still getting used to it.

Jules and Lassiter visit more than once, and Jules sneaks you in a pineapple smoothie and makes you promise along the same lines a Gus did.

  
Lassiter says something snarky about it, but you don't miss the way his eyes steer back to you like they're still looking for missed damage.

You don't make a joke, but you think it, and it feels like the whole room is caught between what you have said and what you haven't.

Gus drives you home the morning of the fifth day with a lighter tone lecture and blueberry pancakes to eat in the car.

An argument you won by turning too fast with a hiss and the way Gus’s face fell into something too close to fear before he relented and unpacked the pancakes in the parking lot, rolling his eyes when your first bite was nearly half the stack. 

Gus rolls his eyes, says, “You’re insatiable.” 

And you can’t help the smile on your face when you see Gus has already cut the stack the way he knows you like it— little triangles with syrup poured soggy in the middle. 

You say, “You love me.” Because that’s the game and, when you’re just enamoring enough to get lucky, correct. 

You aren’t expecting Gus’s hum of, “God knows why.”

Or the way it shuts you up before you become self aware enough to turn your attention fully onto the pancakes. 

The hospital still pumped you full of morphine before Gus sprung you, and the high feels like tension, like something you’ve left undone. 

You don’t need drugs to tell you what you already know. It’s all a little repetitive. 

You change the channel, deflect and say, “So I hear they kicked Daren off the Bachelor. Those wild hussies.” 

Gus takes it like a steamboat from there, even after you’ve parked and walked into the _Psych_ office. Because watching Gus talk, pull out statistics for something as trivial as pre-planned reality television, feels like reliving your best memories overlapping each other. 

It’s like a wake-up call that isn’t a wake-up call at all really, considering you’ve known since third grade when you handed Gus your Superman mood ring and he smiled so bright his eyes lit up and knew: _oh, it was like that._

It’s like that now, too, except you’re in your grown-up self-run detective agency office that you co-own with your best friend. 

In addition to the fact that you’re fresh out of the hospital with stitches scaling down your stomach, more than twenty years under your belt, and forty cities down the road now as Gus explodes about an unjust elimination of a trashy TV special, and you think, _oh, I really love him._

Because it’s cliche, maybe, to be in love with your best friend like this. 

The best friend who drove your drugged ass home from the hospital, who made you promise never to rush in alone again, not unless he was there too. And you laughed, because you had to, or the sentiment of the statement would catch up to you before you could catch it first.

Because Gus isn’t just any best friend: he’s _The Best Friend_. 

The one who came over and sat with you on your bed for seven hours, with chips and red vines, to watch a _He-Man_ marathon even though you were both well past that age range, after it became glaringly obvious that your mom had left for real that time. 

You’ve always known that you’re the first one to leave, to break when it comes to these things.

You know you’re the reason you’ve let everything wait, too many things hanging in the balance because of bad timing or communication or hesitance.

So it’s ten years past due, twenty even, and maybe thirty, if you let the moment slip again. It could last forever, this purgatory you’ve placed yourself in, if you let it.

Even though it doesn’t count as losing, either, not really. Because either way, you’ll still have Gus. In any form that he’ll take you, mostly.

Gus who is your best friend no matter what, even if he doesn’t want to be your boyfriend. He’ll still be the one who’s stuck around the longest. The one who is staying around.

Gus, who is now turning the office TV to the channel you like best so you won’t sleep through your concussion.

You’re a little drugged up, is the thing, so that’s what you’ll blame later for the way your mouth runs together, too loud and too off-kilter when you stare down at your desk, move a few papers and say: “You know, I really, _really_ wanted it to be my name on that marriage certificate.”

And then you’re going, on a roll that you can’t ever seem to stop once you’ve started. That’s usually Gus’s job, to stop you, but you don’t know if that’s going to play out right this time. 

You have a concussion. You can roll with this. Probably. 

You can hear the radio silence from Gus behind you, but you don’t turn around yet.

Instead, you say, “I know I said it was the best man speech when the whole Mira thing came up, which, _yeah_ okay, I still meant that. I’ve been drafting that speech since we were five and I swear it’s extra sweet with rainbow sprinkles on top. It has about three _How Harry Met Sally_ notes in there and maybe one or two jokes from _Friends_ for your cousins with bad taste.”

You laugh, and it comes out too nervous, too much like twelve year old Shawn who wanted to hold his best friend’s hand without knowing how to explain why.

“But I swear that last one was mostly a cute _‘welcome to the family’_ jab at Future Mrs. Gus. Okay, I lied, it’s actually Jessie’s monologue from _Toy Story_ , you caught me! Because I know it makes you cry.”

Vulnerability, that’s what’s making your neck so hot. 

Thank whatever god is listening that you’re too stoned out of your mind to really consider those implications right now.

“I know I said it was the best man speech, but, uh, I had this dumb idea that it was going to be next to you. At the altar, I mean. Whichever way you’d have me, really, because I’ll even sneak in as a preacher if I have to. Don’t tempt me.”

You’re waving your hands around, turning to look anywhere but the scene in front of you, even though your senses are already filling in the blanks for you. 

How the TV still on mute because the cable isn’t on yet, the cable still turned off because Gus froze where he was as soon as you opened your big fat mouth.

A short laugh, and then: “I started this so I’m gonna go all out here. All the cards on the table, I guess? Or whatever the term is. Sayings are your thing, dude.”

You’re not good at this. You still can’t look at him.

“But yeah, it all kind of breaks down to you. You were kind of my first, dude. My first everything, really. To parody the quote from our lord and savior Jake Gyllenhaal: ‘I just don’t know how to quit you, man.’ Because, well, I don’t. I never have. Over twenty years of friendship, and I still wouldn’t even know where to start. And I really, really don’t ever want to learn how to.”

If your life was a movie, this would be the moment something else crazy happened. Crazier, that is, than your life already is. 

In a movie, another gunman would jump through the window. Or an unsatisfied client would swoop in trying to steal Gus out from under you.

Maybe even something as small as your dad busting into the office and interrupting your twenty-year confession to say how disappointed in you he is.

Okay, that one is a little too close to the money.

As it is, none of that happens. _Nothing_ happens, to be exact.

The TV is still rolling. Gus hasn’t moved. You still refuse to make eye contact, even though you’ve finally turned around to face him.

You think you deserve some cowardice after everything.

Your senses are kind of going into overload here. The office light seems so bright it’s nearly blinding even though Gus took care to dim them before you even came in. Your throat feels strange, a little choked up.

It’s probably the concussion. That’s what you are choosing to believe.

You are in the middle of making peace with the fact you have just ruined the best, long-lasting relationship you’ve ever had when Gus says, behind you from where you’ve turned to face the computer: “For the record, I wasn’t the only one to cry at that monologue. And that's not how the quote goes.”

You really can’t help the laugh that tumbles out of your mouth before you smooth it down, “I’ve heard it both ways. And, fine okay, but I definitely wasn’t the one who went through the whole tissue box.”

“I was young and easily influenced, Shawn!”

“Oh please, you were fifteen at least.”

Gus still hasn’t moved, but you glance over and he doesn’t look frozen anymore. He looks like he’s figuring something out, putting stray pieces together. You don’t know if you like that look.

“Okay,” you say, cold sweat replacing the heat at your neck when Gus turns the look on you. “fourteen. But I’m still keeping it in my speech. I planned around that, goddammit.”

“Why?”

You blink. For a moment, you wonder if you’ve been shot again because you can’t put the moment together correctly. That’s twice in three days. You’re losing your spark with those stats.

“Why what?”

Gus is looking intently at you. “Why are you still planning the speech?”

The ferocity of your flinch takes you by surprise. Otherwise, you like to think you’d be able to hide it better. 

“That’s kinda a low blow, buddy.” The thing in your throat feels heavier. “But, you know, I gotta be prepared for when the next Mira comes along. I’ve got the first three pages memorized though. I left the name card blank, just in case there’s a switch up between mail-order brides. Wanna hear?”

Gus ignores the bait. There’s a shadow of something clicking in his eyes that you’ve decided you really, really don’t like.

“I don’t understand,” Gus says, and he’s shaking his head, taking one step closer to you in a way that has you taking one back. “Why would you think there would be another Mira? What have I done that makes you think that would happen?”

The thing is, you’ve never been very good at watching your mouth. You don’t like the sound of your own voice so much as the ability to fill the space with something _not-empty._ And this is screaming _empty_ with the way it’s blowing your chest to pieces.

Your mouth is running three miles ahead of you when you’re snapping back: “You mean aside from the fact you’re a successful genius with good looks poised to kill? Jesus, I have no idea.”

The words are a little more biting than you planned. But Gus is still moving towards you, shaking his head like he has the answer already on his tongue until he’s planted right in front of you, the back of your knees leaning against the desk.

“Not that,” Gus says, eyes roaming across every part of your face when you try to follow them before you get too dizzy. “The idea that I’d ever do that again with someone who isn’t you.”

And then, absentmindedly like Gus isn’t really aware he’s saying it: “But thanks.” 

This is another thing you know about yourself: you remember lies like the truth sometimes. 

Which is the sticky part. The part that made you spend the whole eighth grade wondering if you’d loved Gus that long or it was all in your head. 

It’s confusing and it’s repetitive, but you’re used to it. Well, to sorting through it. To picking out the pieces you need and slotting them together like clues. 

Which is why when Gus speaks, you kind of stop working for a minute. For two. Until your brain powers up and into overdrive trying to sort through everything that deciphers ‘best friend spa weekend together’ from ‘Gus wants to marry me and has wanted to be for an unknown amount of time.

“When?” you choke out, which is, no, you _really_ choke it out because you sucked in too much air when your brain rebooted, and you really don’t have a way to expand on the question. 

Gus gets it. 

“Sophomore year,” Gus says, shrugging but not looking away.

Your heart rises a little bit before it sinks. You call a smile back up to your lips, but it feels wrong on your face, misplaced. Not the kind of smile you give Gus, but one of the fake ones you use when you’re working through something you already know the answer to. 

“College make you realize you missed me? Aw, Gus. If I’d have known that I would have made the post cards a little more spicy.”

Gus doesn’t laugh. There’s a frown on his face now because he’s looking at your smile, but it softens when his eyes meet yours. 

Gus says, “Not college, Shawn.”

And, well. You— don’t have a response for that. No speech prepared or monologue of movie references to recite because Gus has shocked it all out of you. 

“Oh,” you say, and your voice sounds tiny. Far smaller than even you’re used to. 

“Yeah,” Gus offers back. The frown is gone and the thoughtful look is back, mixing with something like a defiance. 

It’s all a little more than surreal. 

You lick your lips nervously and nearly jump out of your skin when you watch Gus’s eyes travel down to watch.

It’s new and not new, being watched like this. Because apparently you’ve had it for longer than you ever could have hoped, so what does that make all the time you spent trying to earn it?

“And _Brokeback Mountain_ , Shawn? Really? I thought you stopped watching after the trailer made you cry.”

The moment feels so ridiculous that you laugh hard enough to wheeze, letting your head fall onto Gus’s shoulder. 

“That,” you gasp out between laughs, and with the way Gus’s shoulder shakes, he isn’t far behind you. “was a misstep. But it sounded great in a confession, huh? I cited _sources_ , Gus. I’ve spent years trying to learn how to woo you.”

The room takes on a softer edge at your admittance. The sun warms you both through the windows, and you can feel Gus humming from where he’s laid his head on yours.

“You know,” Gus starts, “when Joy first saw the post cards you sent me, she thought they were love notes.”

You don’t hesitate this time, “Yeah, they kind of were.”

Gus hums again, and neither of you move from where you’re wrapped up together. The not-looking thing makes it easier, makes it work in a way you aren’t usually capable of. 

It’s comforting, warm; it feels like home. 

“You never stayed in one place long enough for me to send one back,” Gus says.

The pressure in your throat gets heavy again, but for a different reason. 

You find your hand reaching out to hold his. You smile into his shoulder when he takes it, squeezes back.

You say, “I’m not going anywhere.” 

It comes out a little muffled in his shoulder, a little more like _I’m not blowing Ware_ , but Gus gets it, going by the way he laughs, arms wrapping tighter around you in a way that has you following suit.

You’ve always known postcards are no substitute for all the in-person events you should have been there for. Even if just the thought of Santa Barbra had felt like suffocation. 

Even when the city felt like everything you’d ever liked about your childhood home was slipping through your fingers and you were the only one left to watch it.

“I meant it, you know,” you let yourself say, pulling back enough to see Gus raise an eyebrow.

“Meant what?”

“The crack about adding the _Friends_ reference in for your cousins. They have terrible tastes. We are not inviting them to our wedding.”

The joke is worth it, of course. All of it is, the whole morning, past week, the thirty years leading up to this, for the way it makes Gus grin.  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> “I see my punishment revolving in its den:
> 
> Around. Around. There should have been  
> A lesson somewhere.”
> 
> \- Louise Gluck, “The Game”
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed! Comments & kudos make me so, so happy & i would love to know what you think! I am @rhymaes on tumblr if you want to watch me babble about them even more <3
> 
> This entire thing resulted from a quarantine fixation re-watch of the first 5 seasons & a poorly timed Fall Out Boy relapse.


End file.
